Posts Tagged ‘tablets’

It’s difficult to discuss Apple v Android without everyone digging in their heels and becoming self-righteous. Of course we all really know that they have different advantages and disadvantages but it was interesting to see some slides from a recent talk by Benedict Evans talking about the growth of mobile.

When it comes to tablets, iPad make up around 25% of sales. But when it comes to internet traffic, iPad makes up 80%. That is incredible. What it shows is that even though people are buying Android tablets, they aren’t using them.

Based on those figures, you get this breakdown. For every 100 tablets bought:

• 25 are iPads that people use
• 6 are Androids that people use
• 69 are Androids that people do not use

You have to factor in that it doesn’t work exactly like this. iPad users could simply be heavier data users, but even if this is a consistent trend, it doesn’t really change what the above represents – people just don’t use Android tablets. They buy them, then they put them in a drawer and don’t use them. People do use iPads. To me, that suggests the extra cost of buying an iPad is worth the investment.

I’ve now had my iPad 2 for around two months. There are probably two words I would use to describe it – magical and revolution.

I would also agree that it sports an unbelievable price tag. It’s a lot of money, especially considering the other tablets which are coming out now. But these tablets are rubbish. It’s like comparing a £150 netbook to my £1,200 MacBook Pro and it’s the same situation – there are really two distinct classes of devices and because they have come out in reasonably similar time frames we find the iPad incredibly expensive. It is expensive, I will say that, but it’s such, such good value for money.

I really can’t think of a device which has changed the way I use technology in such a short period of time.

Comparable events I guess would be when I first began using computers, arguably you can never really top that. And when I first got my iPhone, that was a revolution as I was upgrading from my much loved, but a little featuring lacking k800i so for the first time had mobile internet access, allowing my to surf the web, use Google Maps, Twitter, Facebook and hundreds of other web services on the move.

But equally, the iPad 2 has simply changed the way I use technology. I don’t cart my laptop around any more, I don’t even bring it to work. It acts as a desktop mostly now, sitting on my desk hucked up to my wide screen monitor, and I use my iPad whenever I’m on the move.

I will switch from my laptop to my iPad to check Twitter because the experience is so much better. I no longer have to make a choice between browsing the web and reading emails or relaxing on the sofa, because it’s no longer a hassle to bring my internet device with me. I probably do more web browsing on my iPad than any other device now.

I don’t watch TV on anything other than my iPad now. Beyond the few times when I have it on in the background or we’re collectively watching a film, any time I’m watching TV by myself I will watch it on my iPad. Same for anything I stream off my media server.

It’s the first thing I look at in the morning when I’m checking what today’s weather forecast is and it’s the last thing I look at at night as I do a final check of my emails before getting some sleep. A job traditionally given over to my phone.

I buy most of my books on it via Kindle or iBooks, and do a lot of my reading on there as well. If I have a PDF to read, I’ll send it over to my iPad using Dropbox and read it on there, rather than reading it on my monitor, or printing it.

Finally, sometimes I just sit and gaze at its awesomeness. I mean, the thing is 8.8mm thick! That’s thinner than my iPhone 4, the world’s thinnest smartphone! It’s actually thinner than the tablets used in Star Trek – that means it’s thinner than the futurist Gene Roddenberry imagined tablets would be 300 years in the future. That’s really, really thin!

The point of that last paragraph is that it feels like a real advancement in technology, like the first time you browsed the internet or used a touchscreen.

The batter is a revolution too. It’s quoted as ten hours and you actually do get ten hours, and that is actual active using time – if you just leave it on standby, it will run for about a month.

The change here is that you no longer really need to think about it. Gone are the days when you would turn on a device and wonder if it had enough battery life to do what you wanted. With the iPad, you just turn it on and use it, and there is always enough battery life. You just charge it up, once or twice a week and it doesn’t matter if you leave the house with only 30% battery life because that is three hours of usage still!

In short, the iPad is amazing.